Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Israel struck a Hamas base in Gaza Monday after rocket fire from the enclave, while a Palestinian was killed as the army detained alleged attackers in the occupied West Bank.
Later Monday, Israeli police told AFP that officers arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who allegedly stabbed a Jewish teenager in Jerusalem's Old City.
The latest unrest comes amid a significant escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence, with dozens killed in recent weeks.
The Palestinian health ministry said Amir Ihab Bustami, 21, was killed in a pre-dawn Israeli raid in Nablus in the northern West Bank, the scene of repeated clashes over the past year.
The army said Israeli forces apprehended two men, Abdul Kamel Jouri and Osama Taweel, who allegedly shot dead soldier Ido Baruch in October.
The military announced it detained three other suspects, after Israel spent months gathering intelligence to find "where the assailants were hiding".
"Overnight, the forces arrived at the hideout apartment and an exchange of fire was instigated between the forces and the wanted suspects," it added.
Separately, in Gaza, the army said it struck "an underground complex containing raw materials used for the manufacturing of rockets" belonging to Hamas, which rules the enclave.
The military said the strikes were "a response" to a rocket fired on Saturday from the territory towards Israel.
Ayman Shamalakh, a gas station owner, said the strikes "completely destroyed" a nearby events hall.
An AFP journalist saw Palestinians using a digger to collect rubble beside a collapsed multi-storey building, on the seafront of Gaza City.
Following the Israeli strikes, air raid sirens sounded in communities near the Gaza border, the military said.Neither side reported casualties from the cross-border fire.
Senior Hamas official Mushir al-Masri said that further strikes would prompt a military response, warning that the group's rockets would reach "ground targets in Tel Aviv and beyond."
Settlement approvals
In a move likely to further inflame tensions, Israel's security cabinet late Sunday announced it would legalise nine West Bank Jewish settlements in response to fatal Palestinian attacks in annexed east Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline government also announced a beefed-up security presence in east Jerusalem, the scene of recent deadly attacks targeting civilians.
A security cabinet statement said many of the newly authorised West Bank settler communities had existed for years, and others for decades, but had not previously been recognised as legitimate by Israel's government.
Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called for the international community to "punish" Israel over the move.
Jordan's foreign minister said it will fuel violence, with spokesman Sinan Majali warning "everyone will pay the price".
On Monday afternoon, Israeli police arrested a 14-year-old from east Jerusalem's Shuafat refugee camp accused over a stabbing in the Old City.
A 17-year-old boy was mildly wounded and transferred to hospital, Israel's Magen David Adom emergency response service said in a statement.
In Sunday's security cabinet meeting, officials also said they intended to announce a new round of settler housing construction in the West Bank.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking during a trip to the region last month, warned against settlement expansion and the latest step is likely to draw widespread international condemnation.
Some 475,000 Jewish settlers now live in the Palestinian territory, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War.
Most of that population resides in settlements that Israel has unilaterally authorised, but some live in communities that have not been given government authorisation.
All settlements are considered illegal under international law.
